Our favorite part of the way the cable news nets are hyping Barack Obama and Dick Cheney's "dueling" national security speeches? The super-sized all-caps crawl that Fox News broke out during Obama's speech: "AHEAD: VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY REMARKS ON TERROR & SECURITY." What no exclamation marks?

Evidently so giddy to relive the debates of the Bush Administration, Fox happened to break out its special news crawl just as Obama was in the middle of a passage critiquing the period of fear-mongering after the Sept. 11 attacks. In other words, back when it was cool to be the cable network hyping torture and war:

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era – that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us – Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens – fell silent.